the dining out luxury (waste)

One of the great things about reading fiction, despite great stories and the occasional great prose, is finding a sentence or paragraph that just speaks to you, based on your current situation, emotions, whatever.  I wrote about finding and accepting truth from any source awhile back, you could also say that one can find inspiration from many different sources.  This, from page 136 of Rules of Civility, really spoke to me the other night...

"If my father had made a million dollars, he wouldn't have eaten at La Belle Epoque.  To him, restaurants were the ultimate expression of ungodly waste.  For of all the luxuries that your money could buy, a restaurant left you the least to show for it. A fur court could at least be worn in winter to fend off the cold, and a silver spoon could be melted down and sold to a jeweler.  But a porterhouse steak? You chopped it, chewed it, swallowed it, wiped your lips and dropped your napkin on your plate.  That was that.  And asparagus? My father would sooner have carried a twenty-dollar bill to his grave than spent it on some glamarous weed coated in cheese."

First, man that's some great writing.  Second, its important to remember that this book is written about the 1930s, so the $20 reference becomes much more powerful of a symbol.  Anyway, this really spoke to me and my current challenges to break myself of the attraction to dining out, as it is a luxury at this point in our life, and really is one that provides the least, when you think about it critically.  Something I needed to read this week.